are compatibility and complementarity at odds?

Owen Strachan has penned
an interesting piece in which he states that perhaps nothing has been more damaging to
male-female relationships than the notion of compatibility. He opens with this
thought: “Compatibility. Has any concept done more to hinder the development of
love?” Such a statement must surely have in mind a narrow working definition of compatibility, something along the lines of a Match.com profile and the self-serving search
for the perfect soulmate. And I get how that's not healthy. But in complementarian marriage, is the desire for
compatibility out of place? In the minds of most, the two terms Strachan
juxtaposes would be defined briefly like this:

Compatibility: what is shared
between a man and a woman

Complementarity: what is
different between a man and a woman

So, do these two ideas live in opposition to one
another? We find a carefully constructed story in Genesis 2 that I
believe addresses this question directly. It is a story in which God creates
man, notes he needs a suitable helper, then commands him to give names to every
living creature. The animals parade by: ostrich, camel, alligator. Adam
obediently names each one. It must have been a very long line of creatures
great and small, as Adam “gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the
heavens and to every beast of the field”. Yet none of them is a suitable
partner for him. Though half of them share his maleness, none of them share his
humanness. They are beautifully formed, but they are not formed in the image of
God.

Imagine Adam’s state of mind as the animals parade past him:
“Ostrich: not like me. Camel: not like me. Alligator: not like me.” He becomes increasingly
aware that, though surrounded by God’s good gifts, he is in a very fundamental
sense, alone. You and I know what the solution to his aloneness will be, but
the text takes its time establishing that his state is “not good” before
pulling back the curtain. Before Eve can be prepared for Adam, Adam must be
prepared for Eve.

And then, after a brief nap, Adam awakes. And there she is,
at last.

Adam bursts into poetry:

“Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called ishah (woman) because she came from ish (man).”

Don’t miss what Adam is saying. After the animal parade of one
not-like-him after another, at last he
sees Eve and rejoices that she is wonderfully, uniquely like-him.

“Same of my same, same of my same. She
shall be called like me because she
came from me.”

The Bible’s first word on man and woman is not what
separates them, but what unites them. It is a celebration of compatibility, of
shared humanness. Ours is not a faith that teaches “men are from Mars and women
are from Venus”. Rather, it teaches that both man and woman are from the same
garden, created by and in the image of the same God, sharing a physical, mental
and spiritual sameness that unites the two of them in a way they cannot be
united to anything else in creation. Before the Bible celebrates the complementarity
of the sexes, it celebrates their compatibility. And so should we.

To make how-we-are-different our starting point is to
reinforce the tired idea that men and women are wholly “other”, an idea that
lends itself neatly to devaluing and objectifying, rather than defending and
treasuring. It is the very idea that fuels the cultural stereotypes of the incompetent
husband and the nagging wife. I push away and discredit what is not-like-me. I cling to and elevate what
is like-me. Compatibility is what
binds us together, like two Cowboys fans finding each other in a sea of Eagles
jerseys.

No one goes on a first date and remarks, “Wow, we had
nothing in common. I can’t wait to go out again.” Same-of-my-same is what keeps
man and woman in relationship when differences make them want to run for the
exit. Same-of-my-same is what transforms gender differences from inexplicable oddities
to indispensable gifts. Because my husband is fundamentally like-me in his humanness, the ways he is
not-like-me in his maleness elicit my
admiration or my forbearance, instead of my disdain or my frustration.

Compatibility. Has any concept done more to nurture the
development of love?

So, no, complementarity and compatibility are not at odds. And
it is precarious to pit them against one another. Compatibility is the medium
in which complementarity takes root and grows to full blossom. Until we
acknowledge our glorious, God-ordained sameness, we cannot begin to celebrate
or even properly understand our God-given differences as men and women. This is
the clear message of Genesis 2, so often rushed past in our desire to shore up
our understanding of what it means to be created distinctly male and female. But
we cannot rush past it, any more than Adam could rush past the parade of
animals that were not-like-him. As
Genesis 2 carefully reflects, a world which lacks the beauty of shared human
sameness between the sexes is a world that is distinctly “not good”. But a
world in which compatibility undergirds complementarity is very good indeed.